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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China plans to overhaul its national college entrance exam and university enrollment system by 2020, to improve fairness and transparency.
The Education Ministry says the plan will ease the intense pressure on students.
The national exam, or Gaokao, is held in early June every year. It is the sole entrance criteria for most Chinese colleges and is widely regarded as the principal determinant of the future of students.
The overhaul will be the biggest change to the exam since it was reintroduced in 1977.
The changes include a plan containing several steps to ensure the college recruitment system becomes fairer, centering on better selection of students based on their actual skills and talents.
Students from the poor regions in central and western parts of China will continue to enjoy preferential enrollment policies that have benefited roughly 200,000 students this year.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
The Apple Corporation in the United States has unveiled two new smart phones and a smart watch in San Francisco, California.
CEO Tim Cook claimed the new products to be the best in iPhone's seven-year history. The IPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus feature larger screens, 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches diagonally.
They are slightly slimmer than previous iPhones and have a better battery life.
As iPhone smartphones have been Apple's flagship products in recent years, they are contributing around a half to the company's total revenues. The company, based in Cupertino, northern California, started accepting orders on September 12th.
Apple also announced a brand new device, the first in four years. Known as the Apple Watch, the new device will be on the market early next year and come in two sizes and three styles. The wearable electronic device will work with the iPhone 5 or newer models to collect fitness and health information and provide suggestions for owners with future applications, or apps.
The showing off of Apple's new products came at a time when doubts are being raised about whether Apple can still remain a trend-setter and innovator in the tech world following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011.
Tuesday's event was held at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, the same venue where Jobs unveiled the Mac computer 25 years ago.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
New animal tests on monkeys show that one shot of an experimental Ebola vaccine can trigger fast protection, but the effect wanes unless the animals get a booster shot made in a different way.
Some healthy people are rolling up their sleeves at the National Institutes of Health in the United States for the first human safety study of this vaccine, in the hope it eventually be used in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The vaccine was deemed promising because a single dose has protected all four vaccinated monkeys when they were exposed to high levels of the Ebola virus just five weeks later.
But the challenge is that the protection wanes over time.
The researchers tried booster shots, and finally came out with a new approach called "prime-boost". It includes a first dose to prime the immune system, followed by a booster two months later using vaccine made in a different way.
With the Ebola crisis rapidly worsening, the World Health Organization has said it will try to speed up the use of certain experimental products, and early results are expected in November.
So far, more than 3,000 people have been infected. The WHO estimates there could be another 20,000 cases before the Ebola outbreak is stopped.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Chinese scientists have made progress in brain-computer interface research after a successful experiment on an epilepsy patient.
After implanting an electrode connected to a robotic hand into the brain of a 28-year-old woman, the hand performed the three actions of the rock-paper-scissors game immediately on the patient.
The scientists say this shows China's progress in brain-machine interfacing, bringing new hope to patients who suffer limb motor dysfunction.
Neurologists from Zhejiang University in eastern China began their research in 2006, and in 2012, they realized actions such as grasping and pinching of a robotic limb in animal experiments.
They are working to improve the accuracy of the action of robotic limbs.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Cyber-crime rises globally, causing some 600 billion U.S. dollars of damage each year.
Experts say cyber-crime involves an extremely broad field, becoming a gigantic industry.
Last year, the United States suffered a loss of 100 billion dollars from cyber-crime, which is more than 0.6 percent of its GDP.
An ever-increasing number of people surfing online have opened many loopholes, and 5 percent of net users have received fraudulent emails in which the senders claimed to be an heir to a large sum of money.
Cyber-crime works well because the clientele is large -- almost everyone has a smartphone.
Experts have warned that it's necessary for larger company budgets to increase cyber security for their users; and an active approach against cyber-crime is needed, given that virus scanners are often one or two years behind the newest virus types.
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